Regents demand, delve into data

Two new appointees to the University of Texas Board of Regents have been peppering UT administrators with frequent, detailed requests for data, prompting one university president to complain and a key lawmaker to accuse the regents of “micro-managing.”

UT regents chair Gene Powell responded by saying that the complaints stemmed from a request from regent Alex Cranberg because it had been misinterpreted as a request from a task force, and not Cranberg’s independent request. But he added he asked his fellow regents to try “to be reasonable and compassionate as a board so we don’t overload the staff.”

“Some of the campuses have gotten a little tired of the requests. They may have been pushed a little too far,” Powell said. But, he added, regents have a right to request information. “When do you tell a regent he can’t do his constitutional duty to manage these schools?”

Powell made his remarks in response to a letter from UT-Dallas President David Daniel protested “the worrisome practice of individual committee members issuing requests for information that are not vetted by the group.”

“Data requests about productivity have come from individuals and not from our Task Force as a whole. My concerns about this were briefly allayed by the action and discussions at last Thursday’s board meeting,” he noted. “However, the very next day, the academic campuses received a request for a timeline on assembly of data in a highly complex form that does not currently exist.”

Daniel was referring to a resolution adopted by the University of Texas regents at their meeting last week pledging not to micro-manage university administrators and affirming support for Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa. UT regents sparked controversy earlier this year when they hired – and then dismissed – a special adviser closely aligned with Austin businessman Jeff Sandefer, a campaign contributor of Gov. Rick Perry. Sandefer has advocated for systemic change in higher education, including separating teaching from research and rewarding faculty based solely on student evaluations.

The day after the regents’ meeting, according to UT emails, Regents Alex Cranberg and Brenda Pejovich asked that UT campuses report on the timeline for the production of data, including “the weighted average student evaluation score on the question that most closely resembles ‘how would you rate your professor overall’ across all students for every organized section of every graduate course taught in the UT System for the long academic year 09-10 year.”

The regents also wanted to know what it would take to produce “the weighted average grade and standard deviation across all students for every organized section of every undergraduate course taught in the UT System for the same time period.”

“It’s not like these people are sitting around with nothing to do,” she said.

Contacted by email, Cranberg defended the requests. “The data requests I am aware of do not conflict with the Chancellor’s priorities, but in fact support his call for greater transparency and data-driven decision-making. We are learning important lessons about data issues that confront the campuses as they and the System face fast-paced decision-making in a challenging and rapidly changing environment. There is obviously a big difference between asking for data (or in the recent case a mere inquiry about the availability of certain data) and the use of that data for micromanagement.”